


heel turn 2

by trrrboy



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Delusions, M/M, Mental Illness, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21806845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trrrboy/pseuds/trrrboy
Summary: a firsthand account of what it's like to be lost between the cracks of "presentable" and "pathetic", as told by Dimitri.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 81





	heel turn 2

**Author's Note:**

> So. I was happy enough with this that I wanted to post it, but not quite motivated enough to finish it. Thus, I deem this an incoherent one shot to test the waters of my return to AO3. Perhaps one day I will add the second part. Perhaps I won't. 
> 
> Enjoy nonetheless. Thank you.

Time begins to make less sense after consciously perceiving four straight days of it. This is something far too familiar for Dimitri, but he supposes it is what he deserves. Tonight is not one of freedom from the gaping maws of perception. 

One moment, he finds himself saying pleasant goodnights to his classmates. The next, he is at his door, hesitating if it is even worth the effort to prepare for sleep he knows he won't have. Several more moments are spent following motions of what perfectly fine individuals ought to do the night before a certification exam, but he does not recollect much more than a blur of mindless routine. This is followed by the standard, run of the mill horrific loneliness and intimate conversations with long-dead companions. They claw at his chest, screeching for vengeance, for meaning, for _anything_ beyond the cruel empty void of death. Finally, the curtain closes around him and the episode ends. He is unfortunately lucid, sitting on the pew in the cathedral, staring blankly at the stained glass that he can no longer piece the saints out of. 

The moon trickles through the window like the kind of friendly ghosts that only exist in children’s books. Refreshing moonlight; liquid, tangible absolution from the Goddess herself. It stops short at his boots, buckled only enough that they didn’t fall off while he came here from the dormitory. He’s in his sleepwear, simple breathable fabric coloured patriotically black and blue. How humiliating, he thinks, if someone finds him like this.

Of course, someone has, as is always the case in his tale of unlucky events. Sound breaks through the pain of his constant migraine, as his soul retreats from the flames and back into his body. Beside him is the sound soft breathing, the only real noise besides fluttering leaves from the Goddess tower and nocturnal insects. Directly beside him, at that. Dimitri dares to turn his eyes to his right, where a pair of the academy shoes are stretched out and crossed over the ankle. They, too, do not reach the moonlight on the stone floor, barely missing the curved outline of the light.

Dimitri guesses who it is before he even fully glances upwards. Sylvain, in all of his truly awful glory, meets Dimitri’s gaze with that horribly friendly and crooked smile of his. He straightens upright, unfolding his arms from behind his head, and oh so slowly throws his arm over Dimitri’s shoulders. 

He’s… warm. Surprisingly so. A childhood of Faerghus’ unforgiving climates have steeled Dimitri to whatever chills Fodlan had in her, and even then, the autumn air is already betraying itself to winter. And yet, Sylvain is… warm. 

Has he always been, Dimitri wonders? Something deep inside of him, residual deja vu, of sorts, says _yes_.

Sylvain doesn’t say anything, for what Dimitri thinks is the first time in recent history. No, instead, he shifts a degree closer, slightly pulling Dimitri into him. It’s more like a suggestion—an invitation—with the feather-light way Sylvain is touching him. He doesn’t move closer than that, doesn’t force Dimitri to lean in. He turns ahead of them, back to staring into the nothingness.

It’s quite strange. Sylvain has always been touchy, something even someone as prickly Felix hadn’t been able to dissuade him from. Always pulling all of them into big, tight hugs. Leaning on them like a child would their mother, even though he towers nearly all of them. Even with Dimitri’s strength, he had rarely been able to free himself from Sylvain’s somehow barely not suffocating chokeholds. Even after all this time, Dimitri can’t tell if he’d been subconsciously holding back or Sylvain’s crest only shows itself for displays of affection. But now, a bitter gust of breeze could knock Sylvain’s arm away. 

Perhaps it’s to be expected, with someone as versed with reading people as Sylvain is. Or, as Sylvain likes to preach, anyway. 

Dimitri really deserves none of his friends, does he? 

~~the last hope, for Dimitri: at the very least, Felix recognizes this: that it's not really all of him, simply one portion of the beast~~

He hesitates for longer than he thinks he should before shifting closer until he’s knee to knee with Sylvain. The only sign Sylvain even noticed is a reassuring squeeze of his shoulder and him adjusting his position to accommodate Dimitri in his space better. 

It is quiet. Sylvain breathes evenly, an easy rhythm Dimitri finds himself mimicking without meaning to. The soft dusk breeze hits centuries-old brick and tousles Sylvain’s hair, where it flutters against the hard line of his jaw. His typical resting smile still sits comfortably on his face, and really, if it wasn’t for the shadows under his eyes or the clearly dishevelled state of his uniform, he’d look like it wasn’t ungodly hours of the night. Not an unnatural sight, to see the hint of bruises beneath that white collar of his. It could simply have been… another day. Another regular day. In a way, it is.

Sylvain glances somewhere into an empty corner of the cathedral, something unreadable hiding behind his eyes. His breath hitches for only a second, but Dimitri has no time to process it. It quickly turns out to be a yawn, and his eyes softly close with it.

Ah. He’s still staring at Sylvain’s face. He looks away; as aware Sylvain has to be on his own handsomeness, it’s still rather rude. Though, with nothing to look at, and his ghosts momentarily soothed by whatever tonight has become, he finds he has to stifle a yawn of his own. 

Dimitri breaks the silence before he slips further into the dangerously calming atmosphere. “Why are you here? You have your cavalier exam soon, do you not?” 

Sylvain opens an eye, looking at him for a beat too long. Like Dimitri’s a foggy night, or a thicket too dense to strike through. It’s too personal. But, when has Sylvain never had some sort of hidden motive in every dramatic action? Too many operas when they were younger, surely.

“As if I’ve ever made a good decision in my life,” Sylvain deflects, “and if I remember correctly, you have one of your own…”

“The lord exam, yes,” Dimitri sighs. Then, he breaks the charm Sylvain’s eerily sincere behaviour has placed over him. “Did I interrupt you and one of your unfortunate girls? I’m terribly sorry, I—”

“Wait, what? You don’t remember?” Sylvain interrupts him, brows furrowing. Worry and regret immediately coats his handsome features, a look he’s surely given to many he’s taken advantage of before. Though, surely not. Dimitri was far too out of it, even still.

Anyway, it is far too late to backtrack, he decides. “No. I do not.”

“Oh, well, no. I caught you on the way back to my room.” Sylvain sheepishly laughs, clearing his throat. Dimitri feels glad for a moment before realizing that Sylvain had been bothering girls tonight, after all. Of course. “You mumbled something or other and seemed really spooked so… I followed you here.” 

The insincerity in Sylvain’s voice is not more apparent than usual, or really even there at all. It’s more of a whisper from behind that tells Dimitri, _that’s not nearly half of it_ . For the first few moments, he is satisfied enough with Sylvain’s response to leaving it at that. It is probably for the better, after all. But… _they_ are not. 

The scene in front of Dimitri shifts, the cool grey stone morphing until is it long and ochre. Rich, orangey-brown hardwood flooring and candlelight overtake the cathedral, morphing it until it is narrow, claustrophobic. It fixes him into a box, renders Sylvain’s previously grounding touch into nothing more than static. His heartbeat, a forever constant melody the agonizing pounding in his head matches to, quickens and rises to a horrible crescendo, in time with the swinging door as he stumbles away from the pew and his room and into the shaky hallway of the not-dormitory. 

The candlesticks on the wall hang upside down, the crimson fire trickling like melted candle wax to the floor. Cracks between wood panelling alight with a dull, bloody flame, and his tongue is suddenly coated with the contrition that retains its taste. Dimitri has nothing to compare it too, but it is absolutely horrible, in a way no words he knows will describe. It makes him retch, even through the frantic pleads that spill from his mouth, unregistered by his mind. Putrid. Thick. Consistency like sand, like ash, like coagulated blood that had splattered into his mouth during his screams. 

He catches his balance on the windowsill, steadying himself over the floor that ripples like a puddle in mud. His ears ring, but his own still-beating heart is louder. Another thump, and the world sets. Not in the sense that the floor finds it’s threads, but that the blood-curdling cries begin to sound again. For help. For the Goddess to have mercy. For the pain to stop. For Dimitri. For anything, anything at all, to free them from this living hellscape. For vengeance.

An orchestra, only for him. Because he is the only one who can hear it. His burden. His _duty_. The only thing that binds him to this horrible excuse of an earth and a life. It is his, and his alone. Charming, in a fashion, to have a song dedicated just for you. A purpose hand-sewn into the tapestries of fate by Sothis herself. 

He promises his father, his mother, Glenn, the knights, the innocents, caught in the crossfire, that yes, yes, he will free them from their torment. One day he will justify their horrific deaths with the heart of the perpetrator. Yes, yes, he will rip them limb from wretched limb—

“Dimitri...?” The voice is breathless, yet not, echoing through the tycoon of demanding screams and the threat of his head to explode, It is both Sylvain’s, Felix’s, the Professor’s, and the dozens upon dozens of lost souls in his head. His name, a single, Goddess-given rope into the well of despair. He clings onto it for dear life, for any hope to satiate the displeased dead.

He looks towards the source of the resonance in the blurry void. Splotchy and constantly churning, there is no direction. It comes from everywhere, from nowhere, from the end of the hallway and the door beside his. 

Fuzzy shapes, indiscriminate, blood orange, black, and blonde, corporealize in places they shouldn’t. That doesn’t match the pattern of the hall. The hay blonde mess, fit with a flowing sea of black beneath them, murmurs something that sounds a lot like blood, before scurrying away, to places where Dimitri could care less. 

He gasps for air in response to another sickening cry that hides whatever the orange one is saying, as the windowsill disappears beneath his fingers. The floor threatens to swallow him whole, like quicksand, and he reaches for something, anything, any lifeline in the wasteland he’s disappearing into.

In the swirling air around him, he finds it. 

It thrusts him back from the saturated hallway back into the greyscale cathedral, where Sylvain is crouching in front of him and holding his shaking wrists, knuckles white with the effort. Dimitri unclenches the fists and lets go of Sylvain’s shirt, crescent cuts into his palms left in the wake. There is raw concern and… _understanding_ in Sylvain’s expression. Nothing else. No pity. No hidden secret or selfish want for a reward. 

While Dimitri does not stop shaking, he stops resisting Sylvain’s steadying grip. He tries to release the tension that has gripped his body like a vice, but finds his own lungs will not even listen to command, never mind 

“Hey, take it slow, okay?” Sylvain says, softly, letting go of Dimitri’s wrist to instead lightly lay on Dimitri’s thighs. “Just keep trying to take that deep breath.”

Dimitri purchases a nod from his taut body, slowly but surely finding his breath again. He focuses his gaze on Sylvain’s mouth, where he lets out a relieved breath of his own before it curls into a comforting smile. Full, chapped lips that are still slightly swollen from his earlier escapade. Then, he glances down to Sylvain’s chin, where the beginning of stubble is hiding along the trace of his jaw. His neck, Adam's apple moving as he clears his throat. The definition of the muscles in his neck, as they slope into irresistible collarbones, half-hidden by the unbuttoned top of Sylvain’s uniform shirt. Purple marks left littered, a bit too high to hide properly if Sylvain wants to keep his shirt unbuttoned. His eyes trace all the way down to where he rests his arms on the seat of the pew, and where he massages slow circles into the sides of Dimitri’s legs.

There are raised streaks of white across his exposed forearm, the one that had lain across Dimitri’s shoulders. Not severe enough to leave much more than that, but still horribly there. There is, however, a hand-shaped bruise already beginning to form below his sleeve. His other hand is marked with barely bleeding cuts, the same as those on Dimitri’s palms. 

It takes far too much effort to choke out, “I’m so sorry—”

“No, no. It’s okay. Your H—Dimitri, it’s fine. I get it. I’ve been there.” An easy smile finds its way onto Sylvain’s face because there’s no way he knew what he had implied. Or how grounding and how his heart stills before returning to a slightly calmer pace at the relieving sound of his actual name. “Mercedes won’t even ask. She’ll fix us up and, it never happened.”

He can’t even begin to imagine what kind of situation Sylvain had managed to get himself into to find out that she’d be unquestioning outside of a battlefield.

“You should have never had to see that,” Dimitri says, so quietly he barely hears it himself. Unsure if it even came out of his mouth, or another echo inside of his head.

But Sylvain reacts, shaking his head, and something vaguely sad reaches his eyes. “My room is beside yours, Dimitri. The walls are thick, but not that thick.”

Something runs cold through Dimitri’s veins. “Ah…”

“And like I said, I get it. Listen, if things ever get bad and you catch them, you just come find me, alright?” Sylvain suddenly grabs Dimitri’s hands, clutching them between his own, eyes fierce with genuine goddess be damned sincerity. “It doesn’t matter if I’m chatting up a girl in town or it’s five years from now and I’m fighting off an entire army back home. I’ll be there for you.” 

“No, don’t put that on yourself, Sylvain.” Dimitri pulls his hands free, and a pang strikes through his stomach at the slight frown that pulls at Sylvain’s mouth. “I could not put that burden on you, it is mine alone to bear. I will not let you clean up my weakness, or let anyone else, for that matter.”

“But—”

“I won’t allow it, and that is final.” Dimitri snaps, far harsher than he ever meant it to be. “I… sorry.”

What could be hurt fades from Sylvain’s face and acquiesce replaces it. “Whatever you say, then. But my offer still stands if you change your mind, or something.”

“I won’t.” Dimitri picks up the shattered remnants of his mask of humanity and plasters them back onto his face. An empty smile softly slides across his face, as easy as anything, hoping it meets his eyes. “You’re a dear friend, Sylvain. Thank you. Truly.”

Sylvain nods, matching the fake smile. “Right. You too. Without you here... well, where would I be?” 

“Asleep?” Dimitri tries.

Sylvain snorts, pulling himself back onto the pew. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humour, Your Highness.”

Dimitri blinks. One beat, two beats. And laughs. Genuine, real laughter, and oh, it feels far too good, for the migraine and the lingering doubts on his grasp on reality. “Oh, goodness… you never change, do you?”

“I try my best not to,” Sylvain says cheerfully. He pulls Dimitri into one of those familiar, crushing hugs, ruffling his hair. “We still have some time, if you’d like to sit here. It’s unbecoming of a prince to show up to class in his pajamas, after all.”

The moonlight has indeed faded from a pale white to an orangey glow, though the cathedral remains as dark and gloomy as ever. 

“The monks will be showing up soon…” Dimitri mutters, glancing behind him to make sure they haven’t quite yet. Still, it is only them. 

“I know how to sneak around them,” Sylvain winks, “so no worries.”

“Alright, then.” Dimitri relaxes into Sylvain’s shoulder, and finally, lets his eyes flutter shut. “I think we shall.”

**Author's Note:**

> In the event that I do not elaborate on this, or in the unlikely case that I do, here is some helpful trivia and/or teasers on what the hell this is about.
> 
> \- Sylvain experiences hallucinations as well, which was the main inspiration for this fic
> 
> \- Ever seen that warrior fuel meme, where Dimitri and Sylvain make out? yeah that happened in the hallway, it wasn't a girl at all :-)
> 
> \- Rodrigue lives in this version of my canon :-))
> 
> Yell at me on twitter for not finishing what I've started, @ zayaychi. Fair warning: I am shy and stupid. Mostly stupid!
> 
> edit: I forgot to clarify the title means NOTHING it was just the song I had on repeat while I was writing it and now I can't change it I've committed


End file.
